Fire Princess
by alexandra lizance
Summary: A sporadic series of drabbles exploring Azula and the Azula-Zuko dynamics
1. Nicknames

**Nicknames**

His sister is the only person who can call him 'dumb-dumb' and get away with it. His sister is the only person who ever calls him 'Zu-Zu'.

He had never thought that he would ever miss her name-calling, but strangely enough, in her absence, he does.


	2. Winning and losing

**Winning and losing**

When he fought Azula on the day of her coronation, he wasn't fighting an enemy. He was fighting his sister.

And when he won because Katara saved him, Zuko stood over his writhing, blazing sister, and felt hollow inside.

Not because she was his sister and it hurt him to see her broken down and out of control – certainly it hurt to some extent, but there was no love lost between the two of them – but because he knew, deep down inside, that when he had won the crown, he had lost his oldest competitor.


	3. Last Agni Kai

**Last Agni Kai**

I.

They stood and watched her with pity in their eyes. _Empty _pity. Even in her state of mind, she could see right through it.

She could see how the peasant-girl averted her eyes, like one would at the scene of a particularly gory accident. And Zuko. Her brother. He gazed at her with his usual look of great noble woe on his face, an expression that sickened her through and through.

He had stolen it all from her.

Her moment of glory. The single moment of glory that was supposed to be hers and hers alone, not shared through some sort of stupid sympathetic obligation like she had shared Ba Sing Se with him. _Her_ glory.

Her crown. The crown she had worked all her life for. Sure, it had been some distant dream, unattainable for the moment, but certainly she had always thought herself more deserving of her father's crown than Zuko could ever be.

Her Agni Kai. The fight that she was always meant to win. And she _had_ won, hadn't she? She had shot Zuko full of lightning – she had done it in a roundabout way, maybe, but he had still taken the shot anyway, like she had thought he would - and he had gone down. The only reason he was still standing, standing and looking _down _at her, was the peasant. The peasant who had chained her like an animal, wet, cold and angry, to the grate.

Her dignity.

_No, Azula. You stole the last one from yourself when you lost control. _A voice in her head said.

And _that. _That hurt the most.

II.

**Blue fire**

She had failed, failed, failed, failed, failed. She was not perfect. _Not perfect._

She was defeated. The shackles around her wrists wouldn't yield, and neither would the metal grating that held them. And it wasn't for a lack of trying. She could burn her wrists off to break free, but she wasn't that far gone yet. She was sobbing and wailing and railing and screaming, rolling about the ground and breathing fire, fire everywhere, but she wasn't that far gone yet.

Her flames were still blue. Blue. Bright blue. The blue fire of Princess Azula. She was still Princess Azula.

The bright blue-hot fire was still hers and would _only,_ _ever_ be hers.

And no one, least of all her brother, could take that away from her.


	4. Dichotomies

**Dichotomies**

The fire nation siblings are two sides to the same coin:

gold eyes, black pony tails, almond-shaped faces, nobility

unsure; sure

unbridled; tempered

passionate; cool

orange-red; blue

yang; yin

rash; calculated

righteousness; self interest

obvious; subtle


	5. See how she burns

**See how she burns**

I.

The flames of Princess Azula burn blue. They burn hotter than most. They burn brighter than most.

Her fuel is pride. It is the pride of royalty, the pride of a prodigy, the pride that comes from knowing that she's one of the best in what she does. It is the pride that comes from being in a position of power.

Her fuel is passion. It is a passion for excellence, a passion for _perfection. _

But her greatest fuel of all, the one that she will never acknowledge: is simmering pain, and molten anger.

II.

Like a bright star, Princess Azula is forever distant, alone in the dark beyond of the universe. That is a price she knows she must pay.

Her brother will never understand. All he cares about are himself, his honor, and how he is constantly being upstaged by her.

But he will never understand what it costs her to burn bright. He will never understand the way she does that those who burn brightest burn out fastest; that the fuel will have to burn out some day, and that when that happens, she will never be the same again.


	6. Goodbyes

**Goodbyes**

When her mother left forever, she left without saying goodbye to her.

* * *

"Remember this Zuko. No matter how things may seem to change, never forget who you are."

Azula frowned from her vantage point, peering surreptitiously round the doorjamb to Zuko's bedroom. Why was their mother giving advice to Zuko at such an hour? Something wasn't right. Ursa's tone was too urgent; her face paler than usual.

Azula watched Zuko blink blearily up at their mother. She watched Ursa put her arms around her brother, pulling him into an embrace. And then, she turned and slipped as quickly and quietly as she could down the hallway and back into her own bedroom. Was her mother going to come into her room next to offer the same sappy advice? She sprang into her bed, pulled the covers around herself, and closed her eyes, feigning sleep, but really listening to the dark.

Moments passed, but she remained alone in her room. Puzzled, Azula slipped out of her bed again, and padded lightly out of her room. She could hear voices in the hallway, which, before even peering round her doorjamb to check, she could recognize as belonging to both her parents.

"Congratulations, Princess Ursa. You've done it. Fire Lord Azulon is dead. I just checked on him myself. His seal marks his will. The crown… _is mine_."

Azula's eyes widened, the implications of her father's words sinking in. She gripped the doorjamb.

"I did it not for you, my Lord," Princess Ursa's tone was patient but tense, "Will you hold up your end of the deal?"

"You have my word," the new Firelord said, "And now, you must leave. You must go, you must run. You will have a while before the guards realize what has happened and give chase."

Ursa nodded. Lowering her head, she turned to go.

"Don't you want to say goodbye to your children before you go?"

"I already did," she said softly, turning back to look at him.

_But you didn't say goodbye to __**me**__! _Azula thought, still hugging the doorjamb. _What about me? _

"I see you've had it all thought through," Ozai said approvingly.

"Goodbye, my Lord," Ursa said. And then, Azula's mother turned and walked out of her life forever.

Azula slipped back into her bedroom before Ozai could spot her eavesdropping on the conversation. As she lay in the dark, tucked under her bed covers, she turned everything she had just seen and heard over in her astute mind. One thing was clear.

_Dad is Firelord now. Dad is Firelord. I am Fire Princess. Fire Princess Azula._

But somehow, as she drifted off to sleep, all Fire PrincessAzula could think of was how her mother had left forever without saying goodbye to her. Zuko, but not her.

* * *

When Zuko left to join the Avatar, he left without saying goodbye to her.

She had brought him home a hero. She had given him a chance at redemption, she had given him an opening to confide in her his fears that the Avatar was still alive. And he had thrown it all in her face. In a single move, he had betrayed their nation, betrayed their father, betrayed their heritage, betrayed _her trust_. He had turned his back on her and left her to bear the punishment for him; the punishment for the lie that they had shared.

She would see Zuko again. She knew without a doubt that she would. But when they did meet, she knew that they could never be brother and sister again.


	7. Free falling

**Free falling**

As she plunges through the air, she allows herself a moment of fatalism.

_I am Princess of the Fire Nation, and this is how I die. At the hands of the Prince of the Fire Nation, my very own __**brother**__._

When free falling, one has no concept of time, nor of distance. There is only the impression of spiraling through endless infinity, and then, abruptly, its end.

Somewhere along the deathly plummet, she comprehends what it means to watch her life flash before her eyes. She sees herself as a child: blue fire and lightning, she sees burns and sweat; trickery, deceit and manipulative words. She sees the people she thought were her friends; she sees her mother; she sees her father; she sees her kingdom at her feet. And she realizes that she cannot, and will not, have it end this way. She is a soldier, the daughter of a nation. She has a dream to fulfill, and she will not die like this.

She will not let Zuko win.

Upon this realization, her body snaps to attention. She feels the familiar sensation of a match being struck deep within her core; of her veins coming ablaze. She pulls the flame from her hair, as fire shoots out from the soles of her feet, propelling her being towards the face of the rock that will save her life.

At precisely the right moment, she flips herself over in the air, and she catches the cliff with her hairpin. With one foot braced against stone, she lets friction fight gravity, until she comes to a firm halt. Her body is screaming, her heart is pounding, but on the outside she is the cool picture of magnificence that she always is. She cannot look down, she cannot look up, so she looks straight ahead, and somehow, despite the vast volumes of air between them, happens to lock eyes with her brother. Her lips curl into a smirk as their eyes meet, as if to say:

_I am the master of my destiny not you, Zuko. Never you._

Her brother stares back at her, safe on the back of the Avatar's skybison. She thinks him pathetic for being so constantly reliant on others to save him; so unlike her, competent enough to save herself.

And then she realizes that maybe she is the only person left in the entire world that she can rely on anymore. That maybe she is the only person in the entire world that she has left to save her.

And it is with this last realization that she feels the final vestiges of her sanity come loose, and go free falling away, spiraling down through the clouds and into the abyss.


End file.
